COMMON MISTAKES IN

PRESENTATION SLIDES DESIGN

COMMON MISTAKES IN

PRESENTATION SLIDES DESIGN

Made by Matukhin D.L.Associate Prof.

EEI TPU

TOMSK POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITYTOMSK POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

Slide Design

• Goals:– Convey the necessary information– Be readable/understandable– Be interesting (enough)

• Avoid:– Over stimulation– Booooring

Logos

• We know you had support• Don’t need to list all of them every

slide• If on first slide, don’t obscure

title/authors• Maybe save it for last slide

Outline

• Title Slide• Introduction• Outline• Results• Conclusions

Outline Slides

• Previous slide didn’t “help” audience• If use outline slide, make it USEFUL

– Everyone (hopefully) introduces their topic– Everyone explains their work, gives results– What is specific to YOUR talk?

• Talk length correlates to outline need– Talk is 45 minutes, maybe!– Talk is 5 minutes… probably not.

README.TXT• Do not attempt to put all the text, code, or explanation of what you are talking about

directly onto the slide, especially if it consists of full, long sentences. Or paragraphs. There’s no place for paragraphs on slides. If you have complete sentences, you can probably take something out.

• If you do that, you will have too much stuff to read on the slide, which isn’t always a good thing.

• Like the previous slide, people do not really read all the stuff on the slides.– That’s why it’s called a “presentation” and not “a reading” of your work

• Practice makes perfect, which is what gets you away from having to have all of you “notes” in textual form on the screen in front of you.

• Utilize the Notes function of PowerPoint, have them printed out for your reference.– The audience doesn’t need to hear the exact same thing that you are reading to

them.– The bullet points are simply talking points and should attempt to summarize the big

ideas that you are trying to convey• If you’ve reached anything less than 18 point font, for God’s sake, please:

– Remove some of the text– Split up the text and put it on separate slides– Perhaps you are trying to do much in this one slide?

• Reading a slide is annoying.• You should not simply be a text-to-speech converter.

Font Size• You are close to your monitor• Your audience is far from the screen

Tahoma

32 pt28 pt24 pt20 pt18 pt16 pt14 pt12 pt10 pt

TNR

32 pt28 pt24 pt20 pt18 pt16 pt14 pt12 pt10 pt

Courier

32 pt28 pt24 pt20 pt18 pt16 pt14 pt12 pt10 pt

Lucida Sans

32 pt28 pt24 pt20 pt18 pt16 pt14 pt12 pt10 pt

Squint City

• If you find yourself saying “you probably can’t read/see this, but…”– Then you probably have a BAD SLIDE!– There are exceptions, but very few

• Test on real screen in conference room– Not just your computer screen 15” away.

This is a really long title for this single slide, I

should have just summarized

• Hard to read• Many people don’t read the title

anyway

• Should have been “Long Slide Titles”

Know Slide Boundaries

• People can’t read text that runs off the side of the slide

Bullets Aren’t Everything

• How many– Levels of

• Hierarchy do– You think

» You need* To express

- Your point?

Speelchick

• How samrt will poeple thikn yuo are?

• Watch for:– there/their/they’re– too/to/two– its/it’s

Picture This• There are exceptions, but in general

– Don’t have only text on most of your slides– Try to draw diagrams wherever applicable

• (Well-drawn) pictures easier to understand

System Architecture

There’s a CPU, a RAM and an FPGA and they’re all connected - The FPGA connects to the CPU’s data cache - The bus is 32 bits wide - Blah blah blah blahYou have to visualize it yourself

System Architecture

CPU

FPGA

data cache

main

mem

ory

32

32

Example Diagrams• Previous slide(s) used “animation”…

• Use only where it is USEFUL• Know if presentation system will handle

– Different versions of PowerPoint, Macs, etc.• Or use multiple slides to safely animate

– Flip-book style

Animation

Can

Be Very

Distracting

Use it sparingly

(it can be annoying)

Line ‘Em Up• This is a bad drawing• Put in some effort

FPGA

CPU

I See A Ghost

• More contrast on monitor than projector• Different projectors == different results• Colors to avoid with white are:

– Light Green– Light Blue– Pale Yellow

• Your slides should have good contrast

• Side note: if printing slides, may want to choose white background to save ink!

Usually can’t read this…

Equations

• Ummm… okay…

Use Simple Examples

• This isn’t one. It doesn’t help.

A B

C

D

EF

G

H

IJ

KL

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

AA

BB

CC

DD

EEFF

GG

HH

IIJJKK

LL

MM

NNOO

PP

QQ

RR

SS

TT

UU

VV

WW

XX

YY

ZZ

a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

h

j

k

l

m

n o

p

q

r

s

t

u

vw

x

yz

Results• You have

lots of coolresults– No one can

read this– No one can

understand this

• Graphs areyour friend…

A B C D E

0.78799174 0.87677244 0.99348605 0.23781547 0.244375260.24910355 0.79708654 0.39825661 0.4894876 0.220794560.65729261 0.46901063 0.36471191 0.04697233 0.634680590.48205396 0.52657506 0.70503426 0.35280176 0.409353130.46328137 0.0774365 0.71517444 0.9394662 0.468436380.09762717 0.70884867 0.81407539 0.24571711 0.724978190.00773315 0.39906447 0.42344939 0.90776976 0.222090060.15857663 0.4181197 0.56488165 0.91405841 0.35783490.59242455 0.17894389 0.61926672 0.02978346 0.507891720.41285757 0.71470398 0.31906988 0.79658426 0.21587647

0.8855586 0.46534556 0.3701164 0.12452538 0.334154970.28231467 0.17509894 0.85801024 0.72984635 0.947312380.82370951 0.03235362 0.95622299 0.27726297 0.766198790.86245578 0.21094811 0.93272287 0.48265505 0.049606460.38953201 0.3665743 0.33754918 0.28178635 0.396370090.80522838 0.63509032 0.43333321 0.97677807 0.961981720.35928212 0.14878634 0.44201417 0.23251612 0.833751540.72099806 0.75212293 0.81061259 0.23756284 0.485189960.13329065 0.31602317 0.87489249 0.5304632 0.26191565

0.2588109 0.89039838 0.81380512 0.59139955 0.484887590.99314419 0.34635186 0.73292414 0.25933239 0.292304910.88041055 0.11473455 0.01934078 0.15717245 0.937806760.72332226 0.80195173 0.1792961 0.07832254 0.411545790.95925002 0.41696749 0.24905812 0.2111233 0.002565360.00580885 0.65322119 0.49666074 0.91641276 0.405732750.26004883 0.3010126 0.45604195 0.99935168 0.91271048

0.1508427 0.84418604 0.96241158 0.05548096 0.940931540.63750743 0.08979734 0.11100042 0.34646613 0.099945330.17176871 0.85518113 0.94522781 0.29368901 0.774441610.15186964 0.53105474 0.69991523 0.07876247 0.00239780.72306385 0.73755246 0.71402806 0.68090612 0.760156360.42140074 0.39036871 0.02247591 0.94725973 0.70692042

Graphs Can Also Be The Enemy

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Pick A Line, Any Line

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Conclusion• If your talk is more than 5 minutes,

nice to summarize work & results– Bring people back if they zoned out– Remind them why you’re great

• Give “selling” points here– 30x performance increase with only

10% area penalty– Described novel method to create

clean fuel from used cat litter

Bad Presentations• Audience won’t see your work is great• But will make fun of you from back row

zzz

What does that slide

say?Dunno, I’m playing

minesweeper

Those are some NASTY

colors…Hey – it

matches my tie.

Please let it be

OVER…

Good Presentations• Interesting topic, explained at

audience’s level• Slides are understandable and easy to

see• Good presentations reflect well on

speaker!

Interesting

I understood this one!

You shouldwith a PhD…

I wonder if this technique would

work for my problem

Let’s talk to them at the

breakI never

thought of that!

But it’s outside

my main area